I have been undergoing a journey in my religious beliefs using a star diagram that forces me to focus on one of my gods at a time and understand what they each teach me in turn as I meditate on them, their natures, and their effect on my psyche.

Monday, September 24, 2007

Difficulty with Apollo

So, here we are, I am struggling with Apollo. He is a god who I have never had much of a calling toward, and as a result I am finding it difficult to break the ice, so to speak. Gods are not people. One does not simply sit with a god and have tea, even if there are kooks out there who claim to do just that. Gods communicate with us, but not just us. Gods stir the world into action, not just us. Gods have means and needs and functions that have nothing to do with us just as they have those that matter very much to us.

The Gods are not our personal assistants. It is not their job to make sure we win football games or lotteries or care for our children. Do they offer protection and favor to those who seek them out? I suppose they do, though I suspect that they do not always do so the way we think they should. I ask Apollo for guidance in understanding myself, in healing myself, and he sends me into turmoil, misunderstanding, and confusion.

I don't judge this to be bad, only that I should always be careful what I ask of the Gods. They may very well give it to me.

But my difficulty with Apollo is stemming from myself, not him. I feel that I disappoint him, and that is a difficult thing for me to personally deal with. But, also, I have to remember that while I am seeking them, the Gods, in my attempts at self healing, it is still "self healing" and it is my own mind, my own unwillingness to open myself up that is causing my problems.

When I asked the God for a vision, a dream, or some such, he sent me one. It made sense, in a way, and yet I have not heeded it. I have still walked away from the orgy, so to speak, i have looked at something I really want, in the dream it is the beautiful Colton Ford, in life it is my own inner health, and just as I turn away from the tent in the dream and enter my childhood home, I feel that I turn away from my inner health in life and tunr instead to the pain and torture of a great deal of my childhood. I cling to it like a safety blanket because it is what I know, and turn from what I do not know because I fear it.

Singing the Moola Mantra the other day (The Moola Mantra invokes deity in somewhat vague forms, so I do not feel as if I am invoking something I should not.) I was touched by what it implies. It is like the longing of a soul to open itself up to the greatness of the divine. Of opening itself up to life and finally, truly, being alive in the truest sense.

I have often been accused of being afraid of the more esoteric forms of worship in our tradition, I must admit that, as Apollo is painfully revealing to me, and Hestia has as well (remember that I realized that I was isolating myself too much in my concept of home) I have indeed allowed my own fear to guide too much of what I believe. That just as the man in the dream turns from ecstasy for the safety of home, I turn away from the ecstatic for the safety of my false certainty.

That, ladies and germs, is a hard one for me to admit. I am a bit too arrogant in my own mind to admit that easily, but the Gods are requiring of me nothing if not my honesty, and I am obliged to give that for my own benefit.